


I Wanna Be Yours

by SenkoWakimarin



Series: Let Them Eat Flesh [1]
Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Blood and Injury, Cannibalism, M/M, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-26 23:33:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16691056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: David needs to eat.





	I Wanna Be Yours

**Author's Note:**

> Look, we all have kinks. This is mine.

There are stupid ideas, and then there’s actively trusting a flesh-eater to harvest from you.

It’s absolutely beyond reprehension, what he’s doing, but here he is. David clutches the knife in both hands, holding it tight and staring at Frank with wide, brilliant eyes. That look is part distrust, part needy, hungry hope, and all fixated want. 

The thing is, the way Frank looks at it, he owes David this. The trust, and all the rest; he owes him after everything David’s done to keep him alive.

David doesn’t see it that way. David has done everything possible to deny his nature, but Frank knew well enough that David wasn’t going to be able to survive on rats and cold, long-dead ground chuck for very long. 

No one understood the nature of the affliction yet, not well enough to explain why those who caught it wasted away without semi-regular meals of human flesh. Something shifted in the body’s dietary needs, making those infected into obligate carnivores, most unable to even palate cooked meat, that much was understood. 

When Frank had begun looking into Lieberman, that had been one of the first things he’d learned about him: he was registered with the CDC as having been infected for two years before being supposedly executed by Wolf. That would have made him one of the first infected, if Frank’s mental math was right. Registration was mandatory now, but back then it had been optional; people hadn’t gotten it, not right away, how dangerous the infected would become when they denied themselves human flesh.

Because that was the thing. The infected weren’t just carnivores, they were obligate cannibals. There was something they got out of human meat that they just couldn’t get from any other source. Those registered with the CDC got discrete packages with ‘ethically sourced’ remains, really no more than a few mouthfuls a week. Just enough to survive, and still a lot of infected people preferred a slow suicide by refusing to eat. Frank had always thought the ones who ended it quick and clean were the smart ones.

Then he’d met David.

David had been infected for the better part of three years by the time Frank was hearing of him. To make it that long, he must have put his care packages to good use rather than refuse the contents. But once he was dead, there was no source of a next meal, ethically sourced or otherwise. So David had been denying himself his nature since Wolf had shot him, since his official death.

He was painfully thin. He refused to eat if he thought Frank was awake or paying attention, but Frank had heard him in the dead of the night a few times. He’d found the carefully skinned remains of rats in the trash. And Frank wasn’t stupid. He knew the way David watched him exercise was more starvation than appreciation. 

David didn’t want blood on his hands, not that directly. David wouldn’t eat anyone, even if they were already on Frank’s list. 

And while Frank sort of understood, what he was realizing was that he didn’t want to watch this man die. He got it -- there’s a difference between some anonymous meat delivered already prepared for consumption, and cutting into a friend for a bite. This wasn’t just squeamishness, it was a fight with morality versus need. 

It was going to kill him for real. 

“C’mon, David. It’s fine,” he says, making his voice as even and accepting as he can. David looks enough like a scared, kicked dog to warrant that kind of gentle handling. “You’re not going to take a lot. Just enough to get by.”

David’s throat works, his eyes fixed on Frank’s face, then his offered arm. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, so quiet and so worried that Frank feels his gut twist. After all the shit Frank’s dragged David through, he doesn’t want to hurt him.

“It’s okay. I’m telling you to do it. Think about it like uh, like when you stitch me up, yeah?”

Clearing his throat and exhaling a shaky, bitter sort of laugh, David shakes his head. “It’s really kind of the opposite, Frank.”

Frank has helped David in other ways and David has accepted it, even been grateful. There was a reason the infected had been nicknamed ‘zombies’ by the general populace, and it wasn’t just the cannibal diet. Infected folks had difficulty retaining body heat, and their pulse was typically slow compared to a healthy person. Many infected people chased the sun like a cat by a window, soaking up the warmth. Living in a basement, David didn’t have that option. 

They didn’t call it cuddling, but they slept in one bed, David curled around Frank, who often ran hot, like a damn heatsink. Frank had brought him an electric blanket, too, but still the bed sharing had persisted. Anymore, it just felt comfortable; David doesn’t complain about Frank jerking awake at random hours, and Frank doesn’t complain about waking up with David’s arms wrapped around him. 

“If you need me to do this, I will,” Frank says, and he’s pleased that he can keep his frustration out of his voice, because as much as he wants to get angry at David’s reluctance, he’s equally aware that it won’t help anything. “Here. Give me the knife.”

He holds his hand out, palm up, and watches David flinch. There’s a certain look to a man at war with himself; Frank knows that look as it’s often enough on his own face. David is caught between his own needs and what he thinks is right, and Frank is surprised by how much the sight pains him. When he started caring so much about David’s pain, he’s not sure, but there’s no way to backpedal now, no way to take back the offer he’s made.

It had been hard to get David even this far, to get him to accept and now agree to the idea that Frank was willing to do this for him. Now that they were here, Frank would see it through. 

“You’ve been drifting, you know that? Unfocused.” David frowns tightly at Frank’s words, still holding the knife close to his own body. “You’re already slipping. What’s the next step down, uh… memory loss, right? You start to forget shit, it’s like dementia. You get confused, you get angry. And you get weaker and weaker, til you’re just bones sitting in your damn chair, watching people you don’t recognize on a computer you don’t know how to use.”

“It doesn’t… it doesn’t go that fast,” David argues, but he obviously knows it’s a losing battle. “We might end this before… when I go home, I can…”

“Give me the knife, David, and let me help you  _ now _ . You can’t wait for after.”

For a second, Frank thinks David’s going to argue more, or worse, walk away. Instead, after a long moment of stillness, David sighs and comes closer. “You know, when they send us the kit, it’s, you know what it is but it’s just meat. It’s just like, you know, raw steak. And you eat it and you don’t think about how that was some person, some poor dead fuck who donated their body. Kinda hard not to think about it being your friend when you’re gonna cut…”

Placing a hand on David’s shoulder, close to his neck so his thumb rests on the hollow of his jugular notch, Frank makes David go still, makes him stop. “Stop thinking and do what you need to.”

David circles around Frank and sighs. It’s cold in the basement, always cold, so sitting around shirtless hasn’t been any kind of joy, and Frank can’t help the shudder that crawls down his spine when David’s hand -- cold, colder than the air -- smoothed over his shoulder. 

“Are you --”

“ _ David _ .”

The name leaves Frank like a warning, and then he’s gritting his teeth against a snarl of pain, forcing himself to breathe through it as David slides the paring knife into his shoulder. It’s really not ideal, not the best place, but now that David’s started, Frank’s not going to correct him. He’s trusting David, which is a little hard to do when David makes this weak, needy sound as blood starts rolling down Frank’s back. 

“Keep going,” Frank grinds out when David hesitates again, apologising. 

The apologies don’t stop, a litany rained down while David carves what feels like a massive hole in Frank’s back. He’s surprised, later, to find the wound is more a neat strip, following the line of muscle that goes across Frank’s shoulder blade. At the time, it feels huge and round, a bite punched out of his back, David working quick and trying to bite back those hungry little sounds with a flood of apology. 

Frank has a horrible moment, feeling David’s hand tremble against his upper arm, where he can’t stop thinking about David trying to keep him alive on the road back from Kentucky, David helping dig an arrow out of his chest -- how had he managed to restrain himself? How much self control had that taken?

When David pulls the piece loose, Frank tenses, the pain screaming to a crescendo. He feels dizzy from it, almost faint, and David’s breathing is as ragged as his own. Blood is rolling down his back, racing, flooding, and David makes a sound somewhere uncomfortably between panic and pleasure as Frank desperately tries to ignore the weird surge of heat to his groin. What the fuck it says about him that his dick would even start  _ trying _ to get hard right now, he really doesn’t want to think.

Maybe he greys out; certainly he has no clear memory of the wound being dressed, or of moving from the chair to the cot. The basement smells like a butcher shop, or maybe it’s just Frank. The cot, normally hard and lumpy, feels absurdly comforting. 

David, curled around him as he filters back into his own head, feels almost warm. His shoulder is tender, an ache that filters down through the layers of feeling into his consciousness, and David’s forehead is pressed against his neck, arms around him. 

“You eat,” Frank asks, the words slurred as if with sleep, the question stupid. He expects a laugh, maybe, or gentle mocking.

Instead, David lifts his head and presses his lips to the back of Frank’s neck. It’s a bizarrely tender gesture, incongruous with their usual interaction, but Frank finds as much comfort as he does strangeness. 

“Thank you,” David says, quiet and sincere. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

That gets the laugh he was aiming for, but it also gets a gentle touch of cool fingers to his back, pressing at the skin around the bandage. The touch is careful but the wound is tender, and Frank flinches. 

“In the, uh, the future? I think maybe we should put down towels.”

Frank grunts and lets himself relax carefully back against David, the way he does when he wakes up in the dead of night and those arms are already there, strange comfort. 

“You fight me tooth and nail about doin’ it the first time, now you’re giving pointers for round two,” he grumbles, and laughs when David goes to voice another apology. David’s arms encircle him and David’s heart beat is slow, too slow for a healthy man’s, but so steady.

It’s soothing, after all the anxiety they’ve been working under. It’s  _ soothing,  _ knowing that David is safe, that David can take some manner of comfort from him, somehow, in spite of everything that comes with working beside him. 

Soothing, maybe, to feel David close, closer than anyone should be allowed. To listen to him breathe, to feel the slow settling of his limbs as he drifts into sleep, infected but healthy, exhausted but fed. To be able to close his own eyes and drift, slowly, into the warmth of sleep with someone at his back.


End file.
